More Pop Culture Musings



I’m beginning to think I’m one of the most shallow people on the Earth, the way the simple things like video games, movies, comic books, novels, animation, and my fiancee make me extremely happy. While the rest of the cool kids are dressing all Goth and reading Nietzsche in the cafe while expounding about the miseries of the world and how no one can understand their pain…



I am at home having fun with no complaints.



Oh, I used to have complaints. Plenty. Close friends will remember the dread that rolled around at Valentine’s Day, knowing that yet another venemous “Fuck You” mail was on the way from me since I was so miserable at being alone and stuck in a far flung corner of the world while everyone else was living the life of an urban sophisticate, hanging out at swanky restaurants, trading amusing bon mots and generally being TV People who were smart, interesting and always good company. Of course over the last few years things have evened out some. Finding The One (Or at least I’ll tell myself she’s The One) and realizing that aside from her, my life was hunky dory has brought me to an almost Buddha-like state of sublime indifference where it is nearly impossible to anger me. It would seem that I now have a reputation for being the rational, chilled out one that usually has something sensible (Or at the very least inanely entertaining) to say. I have to admit, it’s a nice head space to be when NOTHING bothers you and you’re more or less at peace with the world.



Mind you, it also makes for incredibly boring posts such as this one, which lack any kind of drama whatsoever, but I figure something juicy will happen at some point like I’ll lose a limb or something and then I can make posts about physiotherapy and how I was ready to quit until my therapist screamed at me and I swear to God, I heard the Eye of the Tiger theme song playing as he shouted “GO! MOVE! WIIIIIN!!!”



Okay, so I’m vacuous. I can live with it.



Anyway, here are the toys that I am currently enamoured with.



Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas



Yeah, I actually finished this (And when I say finished, I mean I was stupid enough to go for 100% completion) quite some time ago, having mainlined it like heroin right from tearing open the gift wrapping on Christmas (I have the coolest fiance in the world), but it bears repeating:



THIS MAY VERY WELL BE THE BEST GAME FOR THE PLAYSTATION 2.



The sheer epic size of the environment, the sandbox mentality of allowing you to do practically anything from gamble to shoot hoops, to mugging people to visiting a strip club, to carjacking, to strafing a street with an attack helicopter or harrier jump jet… It’s almost frightening how much fun–and frustration–I had while obsessively playing this game. If I had to level any one criticism at this game, it would be my usual hobby horse–story.



Not that the story was bad, and not that there even wasn’t enough of it, so much as it occasionally wandered into areas that left me thinking there would be more exploration of a particular storyline (I’m thinking now in particular of the missions for the government agent) only to have it abruptly end. Ultimately, it was a matter of closure. I think that the way the various storylines concluded had an unsatisfying emotional payoff, compared to the build up. The government agent was one. The resolution of the OG Loc (Or Ogloc, as Lazlow calls him) was an ENORMOUSLY frustrating let down, since I had a lot of pent up anger at his terrible rap that I was hoping to personally show him, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Even the final showdown, which, as a game, was very satisfying, was, as a concluding cutscene, not quite as satisfying as I had hoped. But aside from that one nitpick, the emotional payoff, this is one of those games that has cemented itself in my personal list of all time greats, the one that I would reccomend without hesitation to anyone that has a PS2.



Suikoden IV



Man, the Suikoden series… What can you say about a game that bases itself on the Chinese legend of 108 stars of destiny (aka extraordinary people with amazing talents) and puts it into Japanese RPG form? Though Konami has never seen fit to throw the kind of budget at it that they’ve given to games like Metal Gear Solid, the Suikoden series has always been a minor favorite with me largely because it seemed like the budgetary constraints always forced the game developers to concentrate on characterization and storyline. Suikoden I and II were amazing games on the PS1, and Suikoden III is one of my favorite RPGs on the PS2 because of the three storylines (GEDDO IS THE MAN!) that eventually converged into one immensely huge and very satisfying story that left me thinking, “Man, what a great experience that was.”



Sadly, this newest installment failed to live up to that.



The gameplay itself took a bit of a retro approach, simplifying itself and hearkening back to Suikoden I/II (And perhaps even FFVI on the SNES) simplicity. The story itself was unevenly paced, with a not terrific ending and final boss encounter, and perhaps most disappointing of all, the characters were nowhere near as fleshed out as they were in the previous game. Partly I think this is because Suikoden III had those initial three storylines, and thus PLENTY of space and time to give the characters a complexity and history that a single, fast moving storyline cannot. This is by far the shortest Suikoden game I’ve played, even with getting all 108 stars to join my forces. Though this game was still FUN to play. I can’t really complain too much about the actual mechanics of the game, I was simply let down by the narrative aspects. On the other hand, Suikoden IV is now tagged by me as a special game since it was the one I mostly sat and watched MY FIANCE sit and play. She creamed through the game while I sat back as gaming strategist, lending her newbie gaming enthusiasm with my decades of gaming knowledge so that together we made short work of a game that, while fun, still left the both of us thinking it might be time to dust off Suikoden III and let HER have a go at it this time…



Katamari Damacy



GENIUS.



Let me say that again, this time with swearing for emphasis.



SHEER.



FUCKING.



GENIUS.



My favorite geeky website, IGN, has described this game as “Happiness in a box,” and I have to agree, that hyperbolic description fits this to a tee.



The premise is simple. You are the Prince of the cosmos, which means apparently that you’re an engagingly simple looking cartoon character with a cylinder for a head and sticks for limbs. Your father, the King Of All The Cosmos, had some brief seizure of insanity that resulted in him wiping out the stars from the sky. He puts the task to you, his tiny, tiny offspring (And I mean, like, you’re only about 1 cm tall) to take a Katamari to Earth, and use it to gather up enough materials to repopulate the sky with stars, constellations, stardust and comets.



So, you roll around a ball with “gravity” properties in that it attracts objects smaller than itself to it. As these objects add to its mass, its gravitational properties increase. So you can start out with a tiny ball that can only pick up thumbtacks and buttons, and eventually end up with something that rips buildings right out of their foundations and has islands adorning it like fridge magnets.



It sounds simple and insane, and yet I can’t remember a game I’ve ever had so much fun playing. The incredibly hypercute J-Pop soundtrack goes beyond being inanely happy and reaches a nirvana-like state of True Joy. You CANNOT play this game without grinning and laughing. There’s something infectious, something maddeningly joyful about rolling this damn ball around, with elephants, cars, and schoolchildren stuck to it, while a chorus of happy Japanese children sing about being Happy Rollers in the background.



This is one of those experiences that simply cannot be communicated. You have to sit down. You have to play this game. And once you’ve played it, you have to have it. Play it when you’re in a bad mood, it will make you feel better. Play it when you’re in a good mood, it will make you happier still. Hell, I’ve got some of the music playing in the background as I write this, and my feet are happily tapping away.



Kill Bill Volumes I and II



This may very well be my favorite Tarantino work.



I didn’t watch them both back to back. I actually watched Volume I then got around to purchasing Volume II a day or two later and completing the story. The fight at the House of Blue Leaves was one of the most fun (Damn, but I use that adjective a lot…) and impressive looking fights I’ve ever seen, even without bullet time or camera angles/tracking shots you KNOW could only be done with a computer. The energy, the vicious glee, the sheer enthusiasm Tarantino showed for spilling blood–elevating it to a scale where it could no longer be taking seriously and you almost had to judge it like you would a gymnastics event, “Ooh! Three decapitations in a single stroke! Straight nines except for one 6.0 from the Russians!”–brought the fight a surreal level of artistry that transcended typical macho fist or gunplay and took you to a headspace where the movement and death was a poem. A fun poem. With screaming. And Japanese schoolgirls. And fountains of blood.



I suppose what I most liked about the movie(s) was the fact that Tarantino wasn’t trying to create a film that was… anything more than it was. It was a revenge story, simple as that, and when he decided to create a sleek, streamlined, purposeful movie around that one premise, with no ambitions to teaching life lessons, communicate a political agenda, or make a social commentary, it lent the movie a purity and sense of purpose that I really haven’t seen since the original Star Wars trilogy. When a movie Is What It Is, rather than an excuse for merchandising, or cashing in on a particular trend (Hey! Comic books are in! Let’s do John Constantine: Hellblazer, but make him American and cast Keanu as the the title character (WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?!?)) it gets down to what art is all about, a mixture of talent, imagination and desire to create something personal that perhaps other people will respond to. Kill Bill does that. It was entertaining, it was gorgeous to look at, it had some terrific pacing, action, memorable characters and sequences, and even had a mindblowing interpretation of Superman that I’d never considered before. It is, in every single way, a labor of love on Tarantino’s part, and when a project takes on that importance for the creator, it always has an effect on the audience. Speaking of projects…



The Computer Animated Series



Nope, still can’t talk about it too much in detail, but I figure that THIS, at least, might be interesting to readers, since I am obviously not.



We’re now moving into the stage where we’re seeing some preliminary models for a test. All around, I’m quite impressed with the level of talent by the people involved. It’s pretty scary to see a CG sequence in a videogame or a movie and then hop over to the office and have a guy show you something that’s pretty much like what you just saw, except it’s YOUR idea.



The kicker is, then instead of saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if he looked like this, or had this kind of weapon…” You just say, “Make him look like this, and give him this kind of weapon…” And voila, it happens.



That is a trip.



We’re still probably a few months away (If we’re lucky) from having anything that we can show to the public, but things are still moving along fairly smoothly at this point and once it happens, yes, I’m sure this blog will generate more interest as the flack begins to build and every armchair critic who is convinced that he or she has better ideas will start blasting me for being in a position to do what they cannot. To those future angry writers, I have only this to say if you bother going through archives…



GET YOUR FILTHY PAWS OFF ME, YA’ DAMN DIRTY APE…



Okay, that’s not what I wanted to say, but I’ve always wanted to say that. What I meant was…

GET YOUR OWN DAMN COMPUTER ANIMATED SERIES AND THEN MAYBE I’LL START TAKING YOU MORE SERIOUSLY…



And that, I think, is all for today.



Again, apologies for not being a particularly interesting person, but then that’s the price you pay for being happy. Oh well.

Yup, It’s The New Year Blog

After a long hiatus, it is time to once more foul the airwaves with the rather undramatic events of my life, dramatized with much narrative license so as to make myself sound more interesting.

But first off:

Why I Have Been Silent

Truth to tell, mostly because I didn’t have much to say, nothing much interesting was going on, and I was distracted with games. Lots of games. Tons of games. In fact I’m still playing games at the moment, the current one being the amazing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but I’ll save that for a bit a later. Suffice to say that I was going to make an entry at a regularly appointed time when blogger suddenly went through a spate of eating my posts (There was an entry I had typed out about how I felt David & Goliath was actually handled by Hassidic PR managers that spin doctored the entire affair, I was rather proud of that…) that got sucked into the ether of the ‘net and shall remain unwritten unless someone bugs me to do it again. I’ve always been a sucker for requests…

Anyway, after having a few such posts eaten, I got a little fed up with blogging for a while and decided to take a break, which got swallowed up into months as work, gaming, DVD viewing, movies and of course, the girlfriend all took up their appropriate hours and days. But here’s what you’ve been missing, which is, admittedly, not much.

The Impossible Has Happened

On October 19th, of 2004, I proposed to my girlfriend and she said yes, so for people that have known me since childhood, or, worse yet, highschool, I am now in a position to have never been so happy to have been wrong. There is at least ONE person on this planet that doesn’t vomit at the thought of spending the rest of her life with me.

No actual date has been set for a wedding, it’s one of those things we’ll probably just sort of do when we feel like it. However, after having lived together for over two years, it’s a safe bet that there won’t be any unpleasant surprises we’ll discover about each other that most couples only come across after they’re married and are forced to see each other everyday. We’ve been doing it for quite a while now and so far no major problems have cropped up.

As a special note, I’d like to add that to childhood friend Francis, I must remind you that I am a man of my word. We once made a bet that I would never get married, and if I ever did find someone crazy enough to do it, you would find yourself $1,000 richer on my wedding day. Well, I’ll pay up to be sure, but since we’re not exactly the richest couple in the world, you’ll have to collect on the bet sometime in distant future, but don’t worry, you’ll get it. That’s $1,000 I’m glad to give away.

On Work

Things professionally have been moving slowly but steadily. I still write reviews and other articles for the Singapore gaming magazine Hardware Zone. Some writing has been met favorably, such as my article on the history of Nintendo. Others have been met not so favorably, with one angry reader calling me a “Moronic Halo fanboy” for giving Halo 2 a perfect score. Oh well, can’t please everybody. I’d be interested to see, however, if the fellow who made such a comment would be willing to say it to my face with other people around, but that’s the ‘net for ya’…

On the Computer Animated series, things are gearing up. We’re working on some early production stuff–and no, I STILL can’t talk about what it is exactly–and for once, it looks like my skepticism about the project may be wrong and that it will actually see the light of day. We’re still going to need a ton of work before we have anything presentable, but it looks like 2005 is the year of the CGI cartoon. I’m curious about how it’ll all turn out. I always said I thought it would be neat to work on such a series and now that I am, I’m finding that my production experience in television over the last few years has actually proved marginally useful. Hopefully by next year there will be more talk about it on the internet and I can actually discuss here what’s been going on, thus dragging in a whole new legion of geeky readers who will want to throw in helpful suggestions on how to improve the show such as “Make it cooler!“

On Writing

Sadly, this has taken a turn for the not so great, but there is still hope.

The novels got turned down by Ace Science Fiction, on the grounds that while they were well written, they were a bit risky as a publishing venture because A) They were huge, B) The storylines felt a bit too “complex and metaphysical” for readers to readily accept.

This greatly amused me–and confounded me–since I had thought the plots were entirely too simplistic what with guys jumping 30 feet into the air shooting lasers out of their eyes and all, but it would seem that first Tor and now Ace Science Fiction have both felt that the story, while interesting and well told, is not mainstream enough to guarantee the sales they’d feel comfortable with.

Oh well, my agent continues to peddle the books and after comments like that (Nice read! Too weird!) I have a feeling they will eventually see the light of day once marketing trends swing the other way around and people are looking for something a little different again.

On Games

I have to admit, I may be losing some steam in the Star Wars Galaxies department. I haven’t regularly played it in a month or so, despite the fact that I got the Jump To Lightspeed expansion, which was very fun. Perhaps it’s my antisocial tendencies taking hold once more, but I’ve found myself of late really enjoying console and offline PC games. Vampire the Masquerade was a novel experience. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater may have the best ending for a video game I have seen to date. And trying to get 100% completion on Final Fantasy X-2 has reminded me of how much I love Square and RPGs in general. But the big kahuna, the one that may very well be the single best game the PS2 will ever see is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The sheer scope, brutality and relentlessly vicious humor of this game has elevated the game to near god like status in my eyes. One of the big draws of the GTA series in general has always been the idea of a big, living, breathing world that let you
be an amoral bastard who ran amuck and wreaked senseless death and destruction everywhere. Only GTA let you get a sniper rifle, park yourself at the top of a car park, wait for the lunch time crowd of business men and secretaries to start gathering, and blow them all to pieces.

San Andreas takes this to whole new levels. Now I can go to the airport, steal a Lear jet, fly over to the next city, say Los Venturas (ie, Vegas) jump out of the plane to skydive, then parachute onto the top of a building, pick people off with the sniper’s rifle, run from the cops, steal a bike, drive to an abandoned airfield, grab a jetpack, hop over to San Fierro (ie, San Francisco) grab something to eat from the local burger joint, then meet up with my girlfriend to take her dancing go back to her place for sex, then steal someone else’s car to beat up hookers before going back to the casinos to gamble or maybe shoot some pool.

It is, frankly, amazing what you can do in this game.

And that is the update of the rather mundane events of my life. Unfortunately, due to the fact that life is pretty okay right now, my world is monumentally boring, devoid of really good Gothy angst, but that’s the price you pay for waking up in the morning and being more or less okay with the world.

And YES, I will be updating the blog again more regularly, this won’t be another hit and run post that will sink into obscurity for a few more months…

Now Is The Time For Quick And Immediate Response

To possible latent homophobic tendencies. Or something.

A day or so ago, I read a blog by the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who, not just a few hours earlier, we had seen at his place of work while having coffee. Said boyfriend of friend is a student of human observation and thus, observed, from his own blog, this:

anyway ching yee went to spin @ hrn wif her frens wayne and charlene today. and its ironic dat someone quite the looker like wayne actually detests workin wif ppl in the media…the beautiful mtv types as he calls it. well when he came by wif his kitaro hairdo and all and i noticed a bunch of gay guys turning their heads to look at him. hey maybe he should model for gay quaterly or something. heard dey pay really well.

This caused me no end of mild (Or even wild, swinging from one end of the emotional spectrum to other) apoplectic hysteria as, contrary to numerous speculations (grudgingly, I admit, deserved by my total lack of girlfriend for decades on end…) as to my sexual preferences, I am not gay.

For the record, I am primarily straight, with possible repressed bisexual tendencies. While I do like girls, (It’s that soft n’ purty hair that I wanna’ touch that does it every time, damn them…) I would be mad to refuse A) Daniel Day Louis, B) Jude Law or C) Peter Jackson if they propositioned me. Although I have had an alarmingly high rate of unasked for success when it comes attracting the Y.M.C.A contingent.

I remember once at some gay club that no longer exists in Edmonton when I got dragged down to support a couple of friends, Valentino Wong and Michael Pylko (Hey, whatever happened to those guys anyway?) that I found myself getting hit on, in rapid succession over a matter of just a few minutes, a flurry of flabby, deep voiced and decidedly oogy guys. My only explanation for this is the whole “Delicate Flower of the Orient Thing,” since I’m slim and “oriental looking” and all that, and maybe the fact that I was the only guy not wearing shoes. Perhaps that’s cute, or some secret gay-lingo sign (Sort of like the signals hobos leave for each other to describe possible places of generosity) that indicates “I will do it without lube.”

For someone who desperately wished that the opposite sex would pay some attention to him and wondered why it wasn’t happening, this was a horrifying possible explanation. My friends, in true comradely fashion, left me high and dry to stutter my way through various conversations with men that 1) Immediately sat down and started stroking my forearm, B) Grabbed the fashion program out of my hand and asked me to explain it to them while their nose was 2 millimeters from my own, C) Grabbed said program out of my hands, put it on their crotch and asked me, “What does this say?”

After watching me flounder for a bit, my friends realized that there was a very real possibility that my hysterical muteness might just be taken as a sign of silent consent, and so in order to keep my virgin body cavity just that way, they finally grabbed me by the arm and literally dragged me away shouting, “THERE YOU ARE! WE’VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, THE CAR’S PARKED OUTSIDE!” And then berating me afterwards for somehow throwing out a magnetic force that only people of a specific sexual wavelength responded to. I don’t remember her name, but some girl asked me, “It’s not FAIR! What do you have that I don’t?” And by God, I wanted to smack her somethin’ awful…

Even if I were gay, I think I would have been horrified by these come ons. Flattered, but horrified. I’m a wine and roses kind’a guy. Tell me about my eyes, say I have really deep thoughts, don’t stick your tongue down my throat on the first date, and no matter what anyone tells you, they can say “No!” even after penetration and it’s still considered rape.

In Other News

The concept proposal was favorably received with the SMS message from Nadya, and I quote:

“I love the attack of the giant squid!”

No, I am not making this up.

Yes, I managed to squeeze a giant squid attack into a concept proposal. Do not ask how, do not ask why, that is the secret of my genius.

Man. I was so sure she was going to make me take that squid part out…

I’m A Nice Guy. I Own Slaves And Abandon Wives, But Really, I’m Nice!

This is what I keep telling myself as I tackle my latest assignment. I’m supposed to do a write up for a museum here, a 1st person narrative, about 1,000 words, telling the story of a famous historical figure, in this case Ibn Battuta, who the girlfriend has christened “Batman” and which I am sticking with, ’cause it’s just easier to pronounce and doesn’t make me feel like I’m ordering the dish of the day at some Turkish restaurant.

“Hm… I’ll have the Ibn Battuta, please. And don’t cheap out on the saurkraut like you did the last time.”

Anyway, Batman was an Islamic explorer in the 14th century who ranged across Africa, central Asia, Asia and South East Asia, and is, by all accounts, a sort of Islamic Marco Polo, eventually having a record of his 24 year journey recorded for posterity.

Frankly, I just don’t like this guy.

For one thing, he easily qualifies as The Most Easily Impressed Human Being On Earth. When he visits a town, it is, “The finest town in the world, a shimmering jewel of Africa, and equalled by none other on Earth.” When he visits another town, it is, “Simply, undeniably, the greatest town of this age, and shall never be surpassed.” When he visits cities, he practically has an orgasm, and let us not even get into his opinion of the Mosques he sees. I’m sure some tenet must be deeply violated by the spasmodic rapture he expresses on them. If he were a modern guy, he’d definitely be a DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball player.

He is also, I think, what my university friends might have referred to as a Trysexual: Try dogs, cats, boys, girls, holes in trees…

Upon meeting with certain King, who was versed in poetry and composition, Batman said “This is the most beautiful human being on Earth!” and spent much time with him, doing things he refuses to get into. Hm… not too difficult to read between the lines there. However, over the course of his 24 year vacation, he laid a swathe of alimony across the world, marrying women willy nilly, leaving children behind, some of whom died before he ever met them, and purchasing numerous slave girls who were “Of undeniable beauty, undoubtededly the most charming creature the world has ever seen.”

He also got frequently beaten and robbed and left for penniless, but I figure that’s just karmic payback for all the times he was a jerk.

Of course, the part that really pissed me off was when he wrote of his yearning for home and how strongly it called to him, for nothing affects the heart as truly and deeply as one’s homeland, finally returned after 24 years, spent a week there and then went on another trip across the Sahara desert.

Jerk.

So now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to write a “Hi kids! I’m Ibn Buttata!” sort of 1,000 word essay which is supposed to leave the less savoury parts of his nature (Homosexuality, debauchery, slaving and multiple abandoned wives and children) out, while still sticking to the facts. They want historical accuracy that’s not going to disturb the innocent world view of the kiddies.

And yet, I can’t help writing this thing out, imagining that it’s all being retold by Micky Mouse with a fez on his head:

Batman: And then I went on my Haj to Mecca, and oh BOY! Was that ever fun, wasn’t it Pluto?!?

Pluto: PRAISE ALLAH!

Batman: Hawhawhaw! Right you are, Pluto! There was the Kabaa, and fasting, and reading the Koran, and I married two women, bought a really cute slave girl, then left th
em all at the harbor when someone offered me a free ride to Calcutta! What an adventure! Hawhawhaw!

As God is my witness, I’ll never, ever understand how I get roped into these things…

Stop The Madness

Of my sucky titles.

I’ve already gone and plunked in a few pages of the new short story, brilliantly titled, for the moment, Serial Jen, because it’s about a serial killer and it has Jen in it. In the future, one thing all literary critics will agree on is that Wayne Santos couldn’t come up with a decent title if you put a pen in his hand, directed him to a large, 100 foot glowing sign that says, “Your title is War And Peace, copy that down exactly” and told him to follow the directions. He’d still end up calling it Fight Book.

I think I’ll just pay someone to come up with titles for my stories. I’m totally hopeless.

In other news, nearly 12 hours after the pathetic love offering was put on the altar, it was finally noticed. The couch has been officially barred as sleeping destination today.

I did however manage to take a good, tedious chunk outta’ the concept proposal/treatment that is supposed to be written for Nadya. The only bit left is the outright lying where I describe what the show is supposed to look/feel like (IE, “treatment”) and gloss over the fact that there will be power black outs, leftist chefs that push their theories of Marxist cooking, and small dogs that like to go wee-wee on the chicken breast. It’s all about the glamour, folks…

Also of note is wondering why Nadya is so excited about this project that she would SMS me to discuss it a little roughly around the hour of midnight on Valentine’s day. There could be much speculation about this, but I prefer to think she was just bored, since I’m no egomaniac, and she doesn’t seem like the sort that would find me terribly amusing anyhow. Her idea of a good time is a wild adventure with the beautiful people in some urban fantasy of glitter and luxury. My idea of a good time is sneaking up behind people in Mark Of Kri so I can grab them by the neck and repeatedly bash their heads against a stone column until said head falls off in a satisfying, wet “plop.” This is not the ideal match for even a casual friendship.

Have now been officially awake for over 31 hours. At some point, sleep will throttle me like a studious serial killer, and I will have the privilige of playing Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball, the X-Box polygonal extravaganza that is all about realistic physics on bouncing breasts. I have already been informed that the game designers thought of everything; it is possible to play the game with only one hand. It was inevitable, ergonomic masturbation had to be on someone’s agenda…

I have also been told that the Deep and Involving Gameplay is so engaging that players will jerk and spasm when a ball is spiked towards them. My only reply to this upon hearing it was, “I hope that’s the only reason you’re jerking and spasming when you play that game.”

Someone will now probably want to kill me when he reads this and brings the game over later, but then if I can’t drop little gems like that upon the public, why bother calling myself a writer? It’s all about the versimilitude, man. The realness. The raw, genuine exchanges that happen between guys that talk about CG babes, in real time, with zoom and camera rotation functions.

I think the biggest irony of all is that when I first heard of this game, I wanted it immediately. Most serious gamers I know laughed at me. In a twist of fate, said serious gamers were the first ones out the gate to get their mitts on it when it was available in Singapore, so I feel gooshily vindicated, though I won’t be playing it one-handed.

Fortune Smiles On Children And Fools

My luck has always been much, MUCH better than I actually deserve.

When it comes to job hunting, it’s never really been much of hunt, so much as a call from the blue, with a nice job all prepared and tied up in a shiny red ribbon, left at my door with an R.S.V.P. Usually this happens when I’m on the brink of starvation (Again…) and wondering what the hell I’m going to do next.

Well, guess what happened today?

Yep. Another call. Though this wasn’t quite a total surprise, as previous experience had taught me that this was a possible outcome. And in this instance, it was.

A few days ago, I got an SMS message from, of all people, Nadya Hutagalung.

It would seem she’s about to become my new boss.

For non-locals who don’t know who Nadya is, you can check her out here.

I don’t know what the hell it is with me and these Beautiful People–particularly from the MTV crowd–but there you go.

The way that this particular job seems to be going is that Nadya has put together a production company, and she’s going to be throwing out a bunch’a shows on the airwaves. She was talking to her friend Audrey (Who is married to my friend James, and who I met, along with James during my stint with other MTV-ers at the ill-fated Interruption Television) and was asking about people who knew anything about writing. I seem to have accrued some kind of reputation around here as the MacGuyver of the English language, whether it’s ad-copy, corporate videos, television scripts, magazine articles, or business reports, and so Audrey threw my name at her, and the next thing I know, the wet dream of millions of males across the region is asking me to help her out.

So I thought it might just be a little one-shot thing (She needs help with some kind of concept proposal/treatment for a show she’s putting together) and she sent me a document someone else had wrote which or more less needs to be trashed and rewritten from the ground up. I told her so, and she agreed with me on the phone earlier today, then switched gears and asked me if I’d like to write for a show that’s already going into production. When I said that we could either work out a per episode payment plan, or she could just put me on monthly salary/retainer, I could pretty much hear the grin in her voice when she asked, “Hey, if we put you on retainer, does that mean you could do more projects with us?”

I said something like non-commital, and I think we’ll probably have to discuss this later.

Will someone please explain to me how I end up hanging out with these people? It’s not like I go looking for them, it’s not like I want to hang out at the clubs and be part of the in-crowd, so what’s with this vortex that keeps drawing me in with the inevitability of gravity?

To be fair, I’m probably just prejudiced. There’s still the alienated geek within that reflexively regards anyone popular as The Enemy, but of late, I find myself working for/with them more often over the last few years. Admittedly, it’s kind of satisfying that the same fixations and skills that made me such a pariah in my youth with these people is now eagerly sought, but it’s still a bit disquieting, and gives me rather unpleasant, vaguely whore-ish feelings when the cycle starts up again.

Then again there’s the mercenary part of my brain that reminds me, “Your girlfriend paid the rent this month.”

So I find myself in the curious position of about to embark on a job that most people would pay to get, and my sole motivation is that I want to be able to pull my own weight at home and not have to feel bad about knowing that I’m living off the understanding and compassion of the girlfriend. The beautiful model and all the time I’ll be spending with her is just an occupational hazard. Been there. Done that. Got a free t-shirt out of it.

Game-u Show-oo! YOSH!

When I’m not having nightmares, I’m having bizarre afternoons.

Yesterday I helped out my friend Amelia with what’s called a “Promo”, short for promotion. This particular promo was kind of pseudo commercial meant for networks and advertisers for a game show called “Chain Reaction.” It’s a sort of a low-budget affair that relies on groups of people running around with cheap cameras. I was one of those people.

The premise of the show works like this: You have two hosts, in this case, some Korean-American named Christian and a local girl named Claudine. They were the usual sort, very pretty to look at, nice teeth, sociable and all that. Christian was the “hoster” and Claudine was the “runner”. I’ll explain in a second.

First the they had to locate two people who would act as “Team Captains.” What this consisted of was just running around the street, in this case, East Coast Park on a Saturday morning, asking people, “Hey, you wanna kill a few hours and be on a game show?” If they agreed, then there would be a sort of “coin toss” question. Whoever answered it first and correctly would get to make the first move.

Now here’s where the actual show begins. Christian went up to a vantage point. We found a garden/dining rooftop area on one of the restaurants on the restaurant strip that looked out on the beach. With the two team captains, Christian then presented them with a series of questions. The captain would pick one question, and then would have to look out onto the vista of the beach at all the people rollerblading, dogwalking or singing “Kumbaya” with their fellow Christians on the guitar, and pick someone that looked like they might know the answer to the question. That’s the basis of the show, first impressions. Once the team captain had someone they thought was capable of answering the question (Example, a beer question. Hey, maybe that guy sitting at the table with a huge pitcher of beer might know the answer…) Claudine, who had a radio mike linked to Christian at the roof, had to follow his directions and go run over to the person selected and ask them if they wanted to play. If they said “No,” the chain was “broken” and the question was turned over to the opposing captain who also had to pick someone. If they wanted to play but got the wrong answer, the “chain” was broken again, and same principle applied. If the selected person got it right, then they formed a new link in the “chain” and had to go up to the vantage point to join the team captain who’d correctly picked them. This went on until a chain of five people had been formed, at which point the host asked each individual a question, and they ALL had to get the right answer in order for them to win the $5000 which would be split five ways for $1000 each.

Nice, in theory.

In reality here’s what happened.

First, it was a promo, so there was no prize money. Second, this is Singapore, so they aren’t exactly the most extroverted people in the world. This is an island where people at a “Blur” concert politely clap and remain in their seats, and where people on the street see a camera and go out of their way to avoid it. They do NOT like public appearances here, let alone acting up. Third, this is Singapore, so unfortunately it always seems like the women are the informed, educated ones, and the guys are just silly dorks that constantly say “Ah?” whenever meager brains can’t process the incoming information, which is 9 out of 10 times generally.

Are you smelling the doom yet?

Anyway, after meeting at McDonald’s for breakfast and a recap of who was doing what, we were off. I was thrown my little Digital Video cam (It’s a Sony!) and was assigned to Claudine, the runner, who or more or less had to endure my droll, off-the-cuff observations of the people, landscape and her hair.

Things fell apart shortly after that.

We did manage to locate team captains. We wanted a girl and a guy. We found a shy local girl named “Valentine,” and couldn’t find any local guys at all that could speak, let alone knew what the hell we were saying to them, so in the end, opted for white bread again, and found some Brit with a cute Asian girlfriend named Heather, whom Christian immediately started hitting on, even though she wasn’t a part of the show. Amelia was already starting to feel the pressure, but then she knew the pressure that was coming. Trying to get a Singaporean to appear on TV and be lively and spontaneous is kind of like trying to get the Pope out for a night of nacho and bowling. It didn’t help that most of the so-called easy questions were difficult for most people to answer.

So once the team captains were selected, we went for our first completely random and spontaneously chosen link in the chain, who, due to lack of anyone at the time having the guts to appear on camera, turned out to be the British sister of one of the other camera men, who had tagged along just to see some of the fun.

She randomly plucked herself down on a bench that was conveniently easy to see from the rooftop, and then she was randomly selected by the team captains, after said captains were told, “Pick her.”

Then Claudine and I randomly ran over to her, with Amelia as the unobtrusive “friend who just happened to be there” at the bench, and Claudine asked her the question, which our pre-planted, pre-briefed, randomly selected contestant spectacularly failed to answer. (It was, “Name the author of the Harry Potter books”) and Amelia was trying to whisper without her lips moving, “J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling…” and accidently ended up answering the question, so we had to inform our random contestant of what the answer was, coach her on how to spontaneously search the tip of her tongue for the answer, then go for completely random take two.

It went on like this for most of the morning. Amelia was a real pro. She ran around in happy-go-lucky desperation trying–and usually failing–to find people willing to play. One guy even went so far as to say ‘It’s my Saturday, leave me alone,” without even breaking stride when Amelia came up to him, which was totally amazing to me, because Amelia is really cute, and most guys give her the time of day without her asking for it. On my side, I had a very typical Singaporean encounter when I was hanging with Claudine, smoking a cigarette while Amelia looked for more random contestants to brief beforehand. Some kid on bike came up to us, seeing the crews with the cameras and boom mikes and said “What TV show is this?”

Claudine said, “It’s a game show. Wanna’ play?”

In true Singaporean fashion his eyebrows narrowed, probably imagining the money involved and he asked, “How much do I get if I play?”

I could not help rolling my eyes at this.

Claudine explained that it was promo sort of thing, and that for now, he’d get a voucher for a DVD or CD at HMV, and when the kid realized that no money was forthcoming, said something like, “Uh… I’m seventeen, I don’t think I can appear in this without parental consent,” and then promptly biked off to the periphery of the shooting activities to watch and try to appear in the background waving at people.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice…

Amelia found more people to feed answers to, nearly all of whom were girls. The guys were just hopelessly shy, or maybe just plain hopeless. One point, we thought we’d a really bright and energetic pair of guys who looked really interesting with their somewhat punkish hairstyles and gleeful smiles and Amelia proceeded to interrogate them.

“Hey, do you want to appear in a game show?”

“Yes!”

“Great! We need your friend to say no, and you to say ‘yes,” can you do that?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, could you just stand over there?”

“Yes!” He didn’t do it and continued to smile.

“Okay, just move over there, right?”

“Yes!” Same reaction.

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes!”

“Do you not speak English?”

“Yes!”

“Where are you from?”

“Yes!”

At this point a whole bunch of similarly cool friends showed up, and they all started chattering amongst themselves. In Japanese.

“You’re Japanese?!?”

“Yes!”

“You don’t speak English, do you?”

“Yes!”

Amelia looks at me with a helpless, “This is so fucked!” sort of smile on her face.

Some guy that DOES speak English shows up and explains that this is a tour group of Japanese students who is going back to Tokyo tomorrow. Amelia explains the situation to him, he translates, and the whole group starts saying, “GAME-U SHOW-OO! GAME-U SHOW-OO! HAI! HAI, HAI, HAI!”

The translator explains that they ALL want to play.

I’m cracking up at this point.

Amelia comes up with a plan, since we haven’t had people refuse to play on camera yet, so she tells him to tell them that they need to say “No.” He translate and they start saying, “No! Hai! No!”

Amelia plants them all over by a tree and tries to get them to sit down naturally. They’re all saying “Sit-u! Sit-u!” and not doing it. Amelia gets down on her haunches. They imitate. She tells them to sit in a circle. They start saying “Sit-u circle-u!” and get in a perfect, not very natural looking circle, all on their haunches. I decide to not help matters any by shouting out Japanese words I picked up from anime, like “Yosh!”

“YOSH! YOSH, YOSH, YOSH! HAI!” they reply.

“Mobile Suit Gundam-u!’

“Ah! Gundam! HAI!”

“Akira!”

“HAI!”

“Tetsuuuuuo! Kaneeeeeeda!”

“HAI!”

Amelia is just about ready to kill them and me. She grabs Claudine and tells her to go over and ask them if they want to play. Claudine rushes up to them and says, “Hey, do any of you want to play a game?”

“YES, YES, YES!”

Now Amelia is going to cry.

After more translating, the students finally get it and start dropping all these “Sumimasen!”s and Claudine trys again. This time they’re all smiling, waving their arms in denial and saying “NO, NO, NO!” while laughing all the while.

Later on Amerlia has completely given up on any male that looks Asian and is sticking with the white boys. Things are getting desperate. Every person willing to play who has been able to answer is an educated Chinese girl, the men are all hopeless. Christian the other host has now switched from hitting on Heather the girlfriend of the other team captain (Who has been eliminated by this point anyway) to Mary, some Chinese Baywatch girl in bikini, white shorts and rollerblades, who was picked as a contestant. Amelia finds another white guy, really enthusiastic, seems to be Dutch or something, he can’t speak English to save his life, or at the very least, seems to process English in some obscure Dutch fashion that requires him to repeat the question, then go off on some existential tanget about despair and suicide with a smile on his face. Whatever.

Some other white guy goes biking towards us.

Amelia literally throws herself in front of the bike, arms held up, and screams “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!?”

“Uh… yes.”

“HELP ME OUT WITH THIS GAME, GODDAMMIT…”

“Ooookay…”

So we get all the people up there, the chain has been formed. Christian is going into OTT American Gameshow Host mode and is probably scaring some of the girls with his seemingly cocaine-inspired antics. All of the contestants have been briefed and the answers fed ahead of time. We get our carefully planned, completely scripted, totally spontaneous and improvised reaction shot of all our happy winners. Amelia is just about ready to sleep for a week.

Later on, we’re back at my place, having coffee, we’re both relating the day to my girlfriend, and all I can think over and over again is the same thought that’s been bugging me for the last few years in this biz.

Anyone who says TV is glamorous don’t work in it.

Game-u Show-oo! YOSH!